Book Chapter
Prologue: Humble Origins and Dogged Returns
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Published:January 2024
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The prologue introduces readers to the history of the 1970s television series Columbo. The series originated as the 1960 teleplay “Enough Rope” for The Chevy Mystery Show, morphed into the live play Prescription: Murder in 1962, became a made-for-television movie Prescription: Murder in 1968, and then appeared as a pilot in March 1971 before its ultimate role as part of The NBC Mystery Movie in September of the same year. Given these different guises, as well as its reboot, syndication on local and cable television, and appearances across streaming platforms, Columbo tells a concentrated history of television and its attendant technologies in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
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